


i'll never find another you

by maggief



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Fix-It, M/M, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2020-02-08 20:02:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18630307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maggief/pseuds/maggief
Summary: “Don’t do it Rogers, don’t you fucking do this to me.”Steve sighs. “I owe her a dance, Buck.”*Endgame spoilers*





	i'll never find another you

There is always someone  
For each of us, they say  
And you'll be my someone   
Forever and a day

I could search the whole world over  
Until my life is through  
But I know I'll never find another you

The Seekers, _I'll Never Find Another You_

* * *

 

Bucky finds Steve looking out over the lake where Tony’s and Natasha’s funerals had been only an hour before.

“Don’t do it.”

Steve starts at the sound of Bucky’s voice. He hadn’t heard him approaching.

“Huh?” Steve asks, attempting to act innocent, back firmly turned to Bucky.

“I’ve seen you looking at that damn compass. Staring at Carter. I’ve always been able to tell what you’re thinking Stevie."

Steve turns now, looks Bucky in the eye.

“Don’t do it Rogers, don’t you fucking do this to me.”

Steve sighs. “I owe her a dance, Buck.”

Bucky huffs, a half-laugh to mask the other half; pain. 

“A dance? A fucking dance? Mooning over some girl for a fucking dance, like you haven’t been wearing my dog tags since ’43?”

Steve fingers go reflexively to his throat, to the chain hanging there. He can’t— 

“Buck, I gotta do this. I can save you, as well. This isn’t just about some dame. I can go back to ’45. Stop you falling from that train, save you from Hydra.”

Bucky takes another step closer to Steve, reaches up his hands and aborts the movement all in a split second.

“Save me from Hydra?” Incredulous. “I’m already saved Steve, I’m right here." 

“I know, I know,” Steve counters, arms raised to placate Bucky. 

“Do you though? Do you Steve? Because it doesn’t look like it from where I’m standing.”

Bucky walks past Steve at that, looking across the lake.

“Am I—“ The words lodge in his throat, and Bucky’s not sure he can get them out, isn’t sure he can ask, because he might never be ready for the answer.

“Am I too damaged? The nightmares? The arm? Shuri’s said she can keep helping me, the work we’d done in Wakanda was helping, I swear it was. You don’t—“ His voice breaks. “You don’t gotta go finding another version of me. I’m right here.”

“Sometimes the best thing to do is to start over, Buck. You know that as well as I do.”

Bucky walks away then, can’t bear to hear any more. He leaves Steve standing there, looking out at the sunset across the water, and tries not to think about tomorrow, about the future, about anything. 

Later though, hours later, he still finds himself crawling into bed with Steve. Limbs entwining until you can’t tell where one ends and the other begins. Like Bucky’s heart is entwined as well, and he doesn’t know how he’s going to survive this, when his heart’s been living outside his chest since 1930.  

He sees it in the set of Steve’s jaw in the morning, know what’s happening and that he’s powerless to stop it. And that feeling isn’t new. It lives inside the marrow of his life, the insidious idea that he’s not enough for Steve, that he never will be. And here’s the proof.

“I’m gonna miss you.” And there’s so much he can’t say. So much that those words mean. They mean, I’m mourning the future we’ll never have. They mean, I’ll miss having a life with you, side by side. They mean, I love you, punk, come back to me. 

Bucky feels his heart disintegrating as Steve dematerialises. And in those five seconds, he hopes, he prays to a god he hasn’t believed in since ’43, and he waits. 

He doesn’t breathe. He can’t. 

And then Bucky sees him on the bench, and he hadn’t really believed it until that moment. But he’d know Steve anywhere, even when his head is bowed with age, and — Bucky hopes — shame.  

He watches Steve give the shield to Sam, and he wonders where that shield came from, knows that this timeline's shield was reduced to shards like a broken vase, a dropped dinner plate, no hope of repair. He thinks of kintsugi, of the golden repair of broken pottery, but you can’t do that for the shield, or for Bucky himself. Both broken beyond repair.

Bucky wonders what reparation there is for Steve and himself now. If he can be friends with this old man when the damage had been too much for Steve, even though Bucky had hoped. 

He’s too caught up watching Sam and Steve, straining to hear the words passing between them, that he doesn’t hear someone approaching him from behind.

“Hey jerk.”

Bucky swears his heart stops for a moment, and his hands jump to grasp knives that are no longer there. 

He turns, mind reeling.  

It’s happened. He’s gone mad. His mind has finally fractured from the years of abuse, the torture. He can’t be looking at Steve Rogers in front of him, not while he’s sitting over there, an old man.

“Steve?” 

He’s still wearing that stupid white suit, although he has a full beard, and a look in his eyes that Bucky hasn’t seen since ’38.

“Buck—“

And Bucky loses it. He’s sobbing, great heaving sobs that leave him with no air to breathe, let alone speak. 

He feels Steve’s arms go around him, their solid familiarity convincing him that this is real, that this isn’t a hallucination. He _smells_ like Steve, he smells like home. 

His arms come up to grasp at Steve’s back, flesh and metal alike, but he can’t stop crying, doesn’t even realise that he’s trying to form words.

“You left— you left me. You left.” It’s a litany, the words repeating over and over again as Bucky struggles to understand. 

“I couldn’t do it, Buck. I took the stones back and I went for that dance. I went to save you, timeline be dammed. But that’s not _my_ timeline, that’s not my life. It wasn’t real.” 

“But—“ And Bucky can’t do anything except point, point over at Steve, the other Steve. At the future he thought he’d lost, and he _feels_ the moment that Steve’s jaw drops, as he recognises himself.

“Wha—“

Other Steve, old Steve, chooses that moment to turn towards them. 

“Come on!” Sam shouts, as old Steve raises a hand, like he’s inviting them over at a barbecue, and not potentially breaking all the laws of time travel. 

But even as Steve and Bucky turn to head over, they watch old Steve reach up to his own wrist, watch that familiar blue light-wash of quantum travel and then. He’s gone.

They head over to Sam regardless, Sam who’s still standing there holding the shield like he’s been hit over the head with it.

“He— you—?”

“Hey Sam.” And they’re embracing too, like it’s been years since they saw each other, rather than a few minutes. The shield swings up on Sam’s arm to cover Steve’s back, and for a moment Bucky feels lost in time, and it’s 1944 and he’d follow Steve anywhere, hope bright like the shield on his back. 

As they separate, Sam lifts the shield, half-offering it.

“You, err, gave this to me. From the future?” Sam says it like he can’t quite believe it, but Steve is standing right there in front of them — his Steve — so it must be true. 

“Stark made it,” Sam continues, “ _Morgan_ Stark.”

And Steve laughs bright, and happy. Because that little girl might be sitting inside right now, struggling to understand what’s going on, but here is proof, that she’s just like her father in all the best ways. 

“You’re married, apparently,” Sam says, as they turn back towards the house, swinging an arm around Steve’s shoulders, walking in step, the two Captains America together. 

Steve’s hand goes reflexively to the dog tags round his neck, and Bucky’s fingers don’t reach for knives that are no longer there.

As Bucky falls in step with the two of them he realises that it wasn’t about repairing the broken shield, it wasn’t about fixing what was, or what had been. It was about starting fresh, for both of them. Sometimes it was better to start over, after all.

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> I couldn't leave that ending as is, but I've tried to fit my fix-it into actual canon, rather than disregard it. Let's pretend it works. Many thanks to the CapRBB Discord group, who I've been ranting about this with for the last 12 hours. 
> 
> If you've been emotionally traumatised by Endgame, in any way, leave a comment! We're in this together.


End file.
